A Lie Is Still A Lie Quotes & Sayings

A lie can travel half way 'round the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. — Alex Flinn

Yeah, well all I can say is that a half truth is a still a while lie, ain't it ... — Terry McMillan

I'm not better, you know. The weight hasn't left my head. I feel how easily I could fall back into it, lie down and not eat, waste my time and curse wasting my time, look at my homework and freak out and go and chill at Aaron's, look at Nia and be jealous again, take the subway home and hope that it has an accident, go and get my bike and head to the Brooklyn Bridge. All of that is still there. The only thing is, it's not an option now. It's just ... a possibility, like it's a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It's not a very likely possibility. — Ned Vizzini

Well, brethren, you and I are committed to the onward course, we cannot go back; neither can we turn to the right hand or to the left. What shall we do, then? Shall we lie down, and fret? Shall we stand still, and be dismayed? No! In the Name of the Lord, let us again set up our banner, the royal standard of Jesus the Crucified. Let us sound the trumpets joyously, and let us march on, not with the trembling footsteps of those who know that they are bent upon an enterprise of evil, but with the gallant bearing of men whose cause is Divine, whose warfare is a crusade. Courage, my brethren; behold, the angels of God fly in our front, and, lo, the eternal God Himself leads our van. "The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." "Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Not all babies are cute when they're born no matter how many new parents try to convince you otherwise. This is yet another lie the half-baked "theys" lead you to believe. Some babies are born looking like old men with wrinkled faces, age spots, and a receding hairline. When I was born, my father George took my hospital picture over to his friend Tim's house while my mom was still recuperating in the hospital. Tim took one look at my picture and said, "Oh sweet Jesus, George. You better hope she's smart." It was no different with my son, Gavin. He was funny looking. I was his mother, so I could say that. He had a huge head, no hair, and his ears stuck out so far I often wondered if they worked like the Whisper 2000, and he was able to pick up conversations from a block away. — Tara Sivec

A pious man explained to his followers: 'It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. "Don't be scared," I tell those fishes. "I am saving you from drowning." Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes. — Amy Tan

If he had never created Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston would be remembered for this experiment. He invented the lie detector test. A century on, it's still in use. It's also all over Wonder Woman. "Come, Elva, you'll have to take a lie detector test," Diana Prince tells Elva Dove, a secretary she suspects of spying, as she drags her down a hallway. "I'll ask you questions," Diana says, strapping Elva to the machine while Trevor looks on. "Answer truthfully or your blood pressure curve will go up. "Did you take that rubber report from the secret files?" Diana asks. "No, no!" Elva insists. "Well, I'll be jiggered," Trevor exclaims, reading the graph. "She is lying. — Jill Lepore

All I wanted to do was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet, but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it already. Now, looking out the tunnel of trees over the ravine at the sky with white clouds moving across in the wind, I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you have been with a woman that you really love, when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for that long sudden-ended always; making time stand still, sometimes so very still that afterwards you wait to hear it move, and it is slow in starting. But you are not alone because if you have every really loved her happy and untragic, she loves you always; no matter whom she loves nor where she goes she loves you more. — Ernest Hemingway,

Your own self, your personality and existence are reflected within the mind of each of the people whom you meet, ... into a likeness, a caricature of yourself, which still lives on and appears to be, in some way, the truth about you. Even a flattering picture is ... a lie. — Isak Dinesen

I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn't go off because a British nuclear engineer, a young father, developed qualms after seeing pictures of native children marveling at the mushrooms in the sky, and sabotaged me. I could see why during that short drop before I hit the atoll: the island looks like god's knuckles in a bathtub, the ocean is beautifully translucent, corals glow underwater, a dead city of bones, allowing a glimpse into a white netherworld. I met the water and fell a few feet into a chromatic cemetery. The longer I lie here, listening to my still functioning electronic innards, the more afraid I grow of detonating after all this time. I don't share your gods, but I pray I shall die a silent death. — Marcus Speh

A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July -

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear -

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream -
Lingering in the golden gleam -
Life, what is it but a dream? — Lewis Carroll

You aren't staying in heaven because you still need to purify the mind. Your faith is powerful, but it is invested in what you believe you are, and most of what you believe about yourself is a lie. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Whoever will listen will hear the speaking Heaven. This is definitely not the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to listen, for listening is not today a part of popular religion. We are at the opposite end of the pole from there. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God. But we may take heart. To a people caught in the tempest of the last great conflict God says, "Be still, and know that I am God," and still He says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence. — A.W. Tozer

You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,' said I. 'I will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oaths of the high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man
or scarce a man yet
the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It's the way I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this is wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie; and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it. — Henry David Thoreau

Truth built on a lie is still a lie. — Adrienne Wilder

Cursed graze that burns; cursed mind that never stops thinking. Mirrors that don't lie; doubts that torment; dictators who torture every hope on the rack. The crossroads approach, and it makes my head spin; we choose the path that allows us to sleep; we reject the tempting loophole. Lose yourself within the eyes of the one who deceives, or find yourself within those of the one who still loves you. The uncertainty of what hasn't been experienced versus the certainty of the already expired. Merge the experiences; the game is as controlled as a fire. Feel the heat; feel the cold. Wager, then, on your own defeat. — Eva Garcia Saenz

He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my head, and though he said he'd come back one day I know a broken promise from a right one for I have used them myself and there is no coming back. Minds like ours are can't be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay. — Charlotte Eriksson

The dark side is emotion, Bane. Anger, hate, love, lust. These are what make us strong, Peace is a lie. There is only passion. Your passion is still there, Bane. Seek it out. Reclaim it. — Drew Karpyshyn

Sometimes I feel there's a hole inside me an emptiness that, at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, probably you could hear the ocean. And the moon tonight, there's a circle around it. A sign of trouble not far behind. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still, sometimes when the wind is warm or the crickets sing I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I've had my happiness.. — Eve Hemming

And still the brain continues to yearn, continues to burn, foolishly, with desire. My old man's brain is mocked by a body that still longs to stretch in the sun and form a beautiful shape in someone else's gaze, to lie under a blue sky and dream of helpless, selfless love, to behold itself, illuminated, in the golden light of another's eyes. — Meg Rosoff

I woke to find the sun streaming through the bedroom window. Looking up with one eye opened and the other still closed, I saw that Luca was awake, lying on one side and looking down on me.
"Good morning. Do you want to talk Adriana?"
"No, I just want to fuck. Oh, good morning by the way."
"For a prospective sub you are becoming a little demanding."
"Sorry, am I not supposed to want sex?"
"There's absolutely nothing wrong with you wanting sex, in fact it is a condition of you being here in bed with me. It's just that a good little sub waits to be asked."
"Sorry. Then of course I will withdraw that demand and lie here to await your pleasure."
"Good, a fast learner, that's what I like. — Rachel De Vine

Now whether you like it or not, whether you want to admit it or not, whether you want to operate on it or not, you are made the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Most people who go to denominational churches never ever hear that! They never hear it! Never! All I was ever taught to say was, 'I'm a poor, miserable sinner.' I am not poor, I am not miserable and I am not a sinner. That is a lie from the pit of hell. That is what I was and if I still am then Jesus died in vain. Amen? — Joyce Meyer

Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead. — Noam Chomsky

Let us lie down once more by the breathing side
Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep
As if the Known Sea still were a month wide
Atlantis howls but is no longer steep! — Allen Tate

The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work anyone else. You have to start your won thing. It almost doesn't matter what the thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.
If that one didn't work out, if we still had the money and the people, obviously we would not have given up. We would have iterated on the business model and done something else. I don't think there was ever clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working. By then, we'd figured out our PR pitch and told everyone what we do and who we are. But between the founding and the actual PayPal, it was just like this tug-of-war where it was like, "We're trying this, this week." Every week you go to investors and say, "We're doing this, exactly this. We're really focused. We're going to be huge." The next week you're like, "That was a lie. — Jessica Livingston

Europe is difficult to coordinate, and our main deficit may not even lie in this area of finance and economics, but in foreign and security policy. We have a leadership problem because we are still 27 different members who have still not decided on how to work with each other based on what we used to call a European constitution. — Peer Steinbruck

Here are the world's first brothers, Abel and Cain, sons of Adam and Eve. They lived when the world was young, when everything was much different than it is today. It was before the days of income tax and smog and clogged highways and the terrible problems we struggle with. Yet, despite the fact that they enjoyed what we call "the simple life," they longed for something better, they hungered after God. For no matter how good life is, it is never good enough if you do not have God. Man is never satisfied without Him, and these boys hungered for God. Both had been told the way by which they could come to Him; this is implied in the account. But Cain chose to believe a lie, the lie that is still very evident today, that "one way is as good as another." He took the way that was easiest for him to work out and as a result he was rejected; for, of course, it is always a lie that one way is as good as another. That never works in anything- nature, life, or with God. — Ray C. Stedman

I once thought that The Bridges Ablaze would be that masterpiece. I'm not so sure it matters much anymore. You must learn this while you are still young. Live in the crux of the present. And write to explain the world to yourself and to others. Look forward only to the summer of your first convertible. Look forward only if what's in front of you is a mirror. Because one day you'll be so busy looking backward, and everything will feel like winter. If you still don't get it, pare, let me make it abundantly clear. Just write and write justly. Ezra Pound be damned. Poets lie though beautifully. Don't make things new, make them whole. — Miguel Syjuco

All men have a feeling, that they would rather you told them a civil lie than give them a point blank refusal ... If you make a promise, the thing is still uncertain, depends on a future day, and concerns but few people; but if you refuse you alienate people to a certainty and at once, and many people too. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Yeah,Livie?"
"How do you figure out the right way to live your life?" There's a long pause. So long that I check the screen of my cell phone to see if the call is still connected.
"Trial and error, Livie. That's the only way that I know of. — K.A. Tucker

Yet still, there are those special secret moments in our lives, when we smile unexpectedly-when all our forces are resolved. A woman can often see these moments in us, better than a man, better than we ourselves, even. When we know these moments, when we smile, when we are not on guard at all-these are the moments when our most important forces show themselves; whatever it is you are doing at such a moment, hold on to it, repeat it-for that certain smile is the best knowledge that we ever have of what our hidden forces are, and where they lie, and how they can be loosed. — Christopher Alexander

Upon This Age, That Never Speaks Its Mind

Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,
This furtive age, this age endowed with power
To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar
Into the rowlocks of the wind, and find
What swims before his prow, what swirls behind -
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric; undefiled
Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still
Upon this world from the collective womb
Is spewed all day the red triumphant child. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I won't lie. Looking back is difficult - my memories are tinged with hollowness and shame. Still, I wasn't suicidal. I mean, sure. This last time, I did drink the poison - and maybe this sounds weird, but it just never occurred to me that I would really die from it. And I didn't. Not technically. But psychiatry, like alchemy, is a very inexact science. You'd think psychiatrists of all people would have a sense of humor about an occasional lapse in judgment like taking a few drops of poison. They don't. (Having just reread this note, I'm fairly certain the words are not exactly coming out the — W.C. Anderson

A question.
So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow - not thinking, in other words? Sound hard? Not at all. Logically, it's easy. C'est simple. The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.
In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly any collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites.
Reality, reality. — Haruki Murakami

Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. — George MacDonald

Generally, the lie is a denatured truth.Drama occurs when this truth is still nonexistent, and it must become exitent for the human being. — Marieta Maglas

Evil is by nature fearful and superstitious; therefore it boasts. And thus boasting it succumbs, not to the power of good, but to its own inherent weakness. The premise of evil is a lie that must be compounded to be maintained, until it collapses of its own weight. Hence its downfall, though not immediate, is inevitable. This then is the true power of good: that good need exert so little to flourish, while evil must give all, and still fail. — James Hold

Gone are the days when you could lie on a beach between races and still be in good enough shape to compete. Gone are the days when simply wearing a brand on your firesuit was enough to justify the marketing expense of an Indy Car. Racing an Indy Car is only about a quarter of my life as a racing driver. — Charlie Kimball

But carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] doesn't lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn ... Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar.
So that's us: processed corn, walking. — Michael Pollan

Despite the proliferation of personal storytelling in recent years, and the shift in social conditions that has facilitated these stories being told and heard, there are still certain stories that cannot be told - either because we have no language with which to articulate them or because there is no interpretive community to hear and understand them. These stories become, instead, secrets and lies - stories that signal social isolation and disempowerment rather than connection and strength. One such story within contemporary culture, as the epigraphs from Dorothy Allison and Victoria Brownworth suggest, is the story of class - a story that often only becomes tellable as a lie, joke, or dirty secret. This is especially the case with the category of "white trash. — Annalee Newitz

The next morning, I lie in bed beside my sister, as we used to do as girls in the nursery. She is still sleeping soundly, an arm over her face, the light sheet like a shroud over her soft body. I think of my children waking alone in the apartment on — Sheila Kohler

It will be well for him if at such times he listens only to his Master's word, for other and evil advisers come with their suggestions. Despair whispers, "Lie down and die; give it all up." But God would have us put on a cheerful courage, and even in our worst times, rejoice in his love and faithfulness. Cowardice says, "Retreat; go back to the worldling's way of action; you cannot play the Christian's part, it is too difficult. Relinquish your principles." But, however much Satan may urge this course upon you, you cannot follow it if you are a child of God. His divine fiat has bid thee go from strength to strength, and so thou shalt, and neither death nor hell shall turn thee from thy course. What, if for a while thou art called to stand still, yet this is but to renew thy strength for some greater advance in due time. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Pfaff: The riposte of a civilized nation: one that believes in good, in human society and does oppose evil, has to be narrowly focused and, above all, intelligent. Missiles are blunt weapons. Those terrorists are smart enough to make others bear the price for what they have done, and to exploit the results. A maddened U.S. response that hurts still others is what they want: It will fuel the hatred that already fires the self-righteousness about their criminal acts against the innocent. What the United States needs is cold reconsideration of how it has arrived at this pass. It needs, even more, to foresee disasters that might lie in the future. — Gore Vidal

... ... , but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there. — Margaret Edson

If God is present with you everywhere you go (and he is), and if he is sovereign over every situation, relationship, and location of your life (and he is), then when you blame other people for your circumstances or for the wrongs that you do, you are, in fact, blaming God. You are saying that God didn't give you what you needed to be what he has called you to be and to do what he has called you to do. You are essentially saying: "My problem isn't a heart problem; my problem is a poverty of grace problem. If only God had given me _, I wouldn't have had to do what I did." This is the final argument of a self-excusing lifestyle. This argument was first made in the garden of Eden after the rebellion of Adam and Eve. Adam: "The woman you gave me made me do it." Eve: "The Devil made me do it." It is the age-old self-defensive lie of a person who doesn't want to face the ugliness of the sin that still resides in his or her heart. — Paul David Tripp

For Sleep O heavenly Father, you give your children sleep for the refreshing of soul and body: Grant me this gift, I pray; keep me in that perfect peace which you have promised to those whose minds are fixed on you; and give me such a sense of your presence, that in the hours of silence I may enjoy the blessed assurance of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. In the Morning This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen. — Episcopal Church

The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes I can figure out that it's not the truth and sometimes I don't know and never know, and sometimes just because he says it to me over and over again I am convinced it is the truth because I don't believe he would repeat a lie so often. Maybe the truth does not matter, but I want to know it if only so that I can come to some conclusions about such questions as: whether he is angry at me or not; if he is, then how angry; whether he still loves her or not; if he does, then how much; whether he loves me or not; how much; how capable he is of deceiving me in the act and after the act in the telling. — Lydia Davis

I think that people always say when people pass away that time heals all wounds. And that's probably the biggest lie. It's not true. I think we all need to remember that it is always still tough, and it's like losing a piece of your heart. — Bindi Irwin

They were so far-fetched, so ridiculous, that only someone with his kind of power would have a vested interest in shifting attention away from the commission. It was a method torn from the pages of the oldest propaganda books. Tell a lowercase lie, and people won't believe it. Tell a standard lie, and people will doubt it. But tell a lie in all caps, a lie of truly colossal proportions, and that people will have to believe. And although such a colossal lie, when told by a man of power and position, requires little in the way of actual proof, it is still vulnerable to a large enough burden of contrary evidence. — Ted Kosmatka

Rural Reflections
This is the grass your feet are planted on.
You paint it orange or you sing it green,
But you have never found
A way to make the grass mean what you mean.
A cloud can be whatever you intend:
Ostrich or leaning tower or staring eye.
But you have never found
A cloud sufficient to express the sky.
Get out there with your splendid expertise;
Raymond who cuts the meadow does not less.
Inhuman nature says:
Inhuman patience is the true success.
Human impatience trips you as you run;
Stand still and you must lie.
It is the grass that cuts the mower down;
It is the cloud that swallows up the sky. — Adrienne Rich

There's no happy ending ... Nevertheless, we might well say that is exactly Harriet Beecher Stowe's point. In 1852 slavery had not been abolished. Slaves were still on the plantations and many of them were in the hands of people like Legree. Her book was written to shame the collective conscience of America into action against an atrocity which was still continuing. So a happy ending would have been, frankly, a lie and a betrayal. ...

Most of the charges are basically true. Stowe did stereotype. She did sentimentalize. She offered a role model which later offended African American pride. On the other hand, what she did worked. She wasn't trying to provide a role model for African Americans. She was trying to make white Americans ashamed of themselves. ...

Perhaps the short answer to her critics is to ask, "Do you want glory, approval, all those good things? Or do you want to achieve your goal? — Thomas A. Shippey

I can't lie to you and tell you that standing in front of someone and offering them your soul and having them reject you is not gonna be one of the worst things that ever happens to you. You will wonder for days or weeks or months or years afterward what it is about you that was so wrong or broken or ugly that they couldn't love you the way you loved them. You will look for all the reasons inside yourself that they didn't want you and you will find a million.
Maybe it was the way you looked in the mornings when you first woke up and hadn't showered. Maybe it was the way you were too available, because despite what everyone says, playing hard to get is still attractive.
Some days you will believe that every atom of your being is defective somehow. What you need to remember, as I remembered as I watched Grace Town leave, is that you are extraordinary. — Krystal Sutherland

Real liars don't lie about anything," Hanna said. "They just lie. 'About' is a word liars use to justify their lying, to make it seem like a localized problem." "You've made quite a study," Grace said, trying to sound light and wry. "But I still don't know," Hanna said. "And that upsets me. With a liar, you can never know the whole truth, ever. You can't ever be sure that this version is the real version. There is no end, no bottom. Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing was a hoax. — Rebecca Scherm

When I first left drama school, I was too posh for the working-class parts and not posh enough for the upper-class roles. You know what England is like: the gradations of accent and how you're judged by them are still there. I discovered that to get a break you have to lie about where you're from. — Ben Chaplin

You knew what I was," he said, taking his hair back from his face, eyes wild with the will to make me believe. "You knew that my face is a lie, just pretending to be human. And you still wanted me, you could touch me, you could see what I am, the only one who knew and wanted me all the same, and you said I wasn't a
" his chest hitched. "Not a monster. I was going to tell you, and then I thought, well, I'm probably going to die in the underworld, so why can't I have this until then? I'm the stupid one; not you. I'm so sorry. — Karen Healey

Eli: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters.He restores my soul he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me
Solara: That's beautiful, did you write that?
Eli: Yes, I did.
[chuckles]
Eli: No, no. No. No, that was around a long time before you and I got here, that's for sure. — Book Of Eli Movie

For great changes in the human mind are terrible. As we realize them we realize the limitless possibilities of sinister deeds that lie hidden in every human being. A little child that loves a doll can become an old, crafty, secret murderer. How horrible! And perhaps it is still more horrible to think that, while the human envelope remains totally unchanged, every word of the letter within may become altered, and a message of peace fade into a sentence of death. — Robert Smythe Hichens

Or just claim it come from Leviticus since nobody ever read Leviticus. This is how you know. Nobody who get to the end of Leviticus can still take that book seriously. Even in a book full of it, that book is mad as shit. Don't lie with man as with woman, sure I can run with that reasoning. But don't eat crab? Not even with the nice, soft, sweet roast yam? And why kill a man for that? And trust me, the last thing any man who rape my daughter going to get to do is marry her. How, when I slice him up piece by piece, keeping him alive for all of it and have him watch me feed him foot to stray dog? — Marlon James

Sometimes, silence speaks louder than words. Just because it is peaceful, it doesn't mean it is still and void, as a few may think. It is insightful, powerful and full of meaning. It is when one can't lie to oneself. You have to learn to listen to what she is not saying. Listen to her silence. And listen to yours, too. — Cristiane Serruya

The nimble lie
Is like the second-hand upon a clock;
We see it fly; while the hour-hand of truth
Seems to stand still, and yet it moves unseen,
And wins, at last, for the clock will not strike
Till it has reached the goal. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Astra is a beauty. ( ... ) Astra is so beautiful that I have no wish to describe her beauty. I will say only that her beauty is the expression of her soul. Her beauty lives in her quiet walk, in her shy movements, in her always-lowered eyelids, in her barely perceptible smile, in the soft outline of her girlish shoulders, in the chastity of her poor, almost beggarly clothing, in her thoughtful grey eyes. She is a white water lily in a pond shadowed by the branches of trees, born amid still, contemplative water. ( ... ) The world of modest female beauty finds its expression in Astra. As for what may lie hidden in the depths of these waters, no-one can say unless he breaks the water's smooth surface, walks barefoot through the cutting sedge and treads the silty, sucking mud - now cold, now strangely warm. But I only stand on the shore, admiring the lily from a distance — Vasily Grossman

Late in the night I pay
the unrest I own
to the life that has never lived
and cannot live now.
What the world could be
is my good dream
and my agony when, dreaming it,
I lie awake and turn
and look into the dark.
I think of a luxury
in the sturdiness and grace
of necessary things, not
in frivolity. That would heal
the earth, and heal men.
But the end, too, is part
of the pattern, the last
labor of the heart:
to learn to lie still,
one with the earth
again, and let the world go. — Wendell Berry

A myth is a fantasy, a preferred lie, a foundational story, a hypnotic trance, an identity game, a virtual reality, one that can be either inspirational or despairing. It is a story in which I cast myself; it is my inner cinema, the motion picture of my inner reality - one that moves all the time. No diagnosis can fix the myth, no cure can settle it, because our inner life is precisely what, in us, will not lie still. — Ginette Paris

I suppose I'm still walking that line between life and death, trying to choose which side I'm on."
"I want you on my side, healer," Jenna said.
"And ... I want to be," he said. "It's just ... " He searched her face. "How do you ever really know a person?"
Jenna ran her fingertips over the back of his hand, tracing the veins. "Not everything is a lie, Wolf," she said. "Sometimes you have to believe what you see. — Cinda Williams Chima

Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said 'friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier. — Sarah Dessen

Defining the very earliest music and still prominent in many cultures, this musical sound stresses beat over melody, and may in fact include no melody at all. One of the reasons for the popularity of rhythm-only music is that anyone can immediately play it at some level, even with no training. Kids do it all the time, naturally. The fact that I often catch myself spontaneously tapping my foot to an unknown beat or lie in bed just a bit longer listening contentedly to my heartbeat is a testament to the close connection between life and rhythm — Anonymous

What he liked about his brother, he said, is that he made people become what they didn't think they could become. He twisted something in their hearts. Gave them new places to go. Even dead, he'd still do that. His brother believed that the space for God was one of the last great frontiers: men and women could do all sorts of things but the real mystery would always lie in a different beyond. He would just fling the ashes and let them settle where they wanted. — Colum McCann

Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's - that is a sacrifice we dare not make! — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If i believe my truth is true and you believe your truth is true,what if my truth says yours is a lie.is it still true? — Lecrea

I stay sane because I am sane! I am sane because I am willing to stand up and fight, when others would lie down and die. I will stand before you right now, and swear by my Prophetic Stamp: No More! No more violence, no more bloodshed, no more ceaseless, needless death - not one pico more! By God, I will not stand still for rampant death, nor let it pass me by! Not at my post. Not on my watch! I will throw my own life into the danger zone and stand between our beloved homes and the war's worst desolation - and no other life shall pay! For I am a soldier . . . and that place is mine!. Ia — Jean Johnson

Please don't forget: I am my body. When my body gets smaller, it is still me. When my body gets bigger, it is still me. There is not a thin woman inside me, awaiting excavation. I am one piece. I am also not a uterus riding around in a meat incubator. There is no substantive difference between the repulsive campaign to separate women's bodies from their reproductive systems - perpetuating the lie that abortion and birth control are not healthcare - and the repulsive campaign to convince women that they and their body size are separate, alienated entities. Both say, "Your body is not yours." Both demand, "Beg for your humanity." Both insist, "Your autonomy is conditional." This is why fat is a feminist issue. All — Lindy West

For in this sickened world, it is better to believe in something too fiercely than to believe in nothing.' Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too. 'No, it isn't!' shouted Mosca the Housefly, Quillam Mye's daughter. 'Not if what you're believin' isn't blinkin' well True! You shouldn't just go believin' things for no reason, pertickly if you got a sword in your hand! Sacred just means something you're not meant to think about properly, an' you should never stop thinking! Show me something I can kick, and hit with rocks, and set fire to, and leave out in the rain, and think about, and if it's still standing after all that then maybe, just maybe, I'll start to believe in it, but not till then. An' if all we're left with is muck and wickedness and no gods, then we'd better face it and get used to it because it's better than a lie. Which is what you are, Mr Kohlrabi.' Mosca — Frances Hardinge

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. It even lies coldly, and this lie crawls out of its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." This is a lie! The ones who created the peoples were the creators, they hung a faith and a love over them, and thus they served life. The ones who set traps for the many and call them "state" are annihilators, they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them. Where there are still peoples the state is not understood, and it is hated as the evil eye and the sin against customs and rights. This — Friedrich Nietzsche

I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to words, and that words can do wonderful things, and it's too bad to just let them lie there without doing anything with and for them. — Gwendolyn Brooks

You are in love, at a point where pride and apprehension scuffle within you. Part of you wants time to slow down: for this, you say to yourself, is the best period of your whole life. I am in love, I want to savour it, study it, lie around in languor with it; may today last forever. This is your poetical side. However, there is also your prose side, which urges time not to slow down but hurry up. How do you know this is love, your prose side whispers like a sceptical lawyer, it's only been around for a few weeks, a few months. You won't know it's the real thing unless you (and she) still feel the same in, oh, a year or so at least; that's the only way to prove you aren't living a dragonfly mistake. Get through this bit, however much you enjoy it, as fast as possible; then you'll be able to find out whether or not you're really in love. — Julian Barnes

And more than that, Bodee left me with hope. For love. For wanting someone to touch me again and to lie with me without fear as my first response. Because Bodee slept in his sneakers, because Bodee asked for a kiss instead of just taking it, and because he kept space between us. He danced with two fingers until I asked for three or four ... and his hand on my hip.
I know we're both still broken. Both of us. But Bodee's got the glue to make us whole.
He is love. — Courtney C. Stevens

By the time of Athelstan the country was divided into shires, hundreds and vills or townships, precisely in order to expedite taxation. The shires of England were unique, their boundaries lasting for more than a thousand years until the administrative reorganization of 1974. The earliest of them date from the late seventh and early eighth centuries, but many of their borders lie further back in the shape of the Iron Age tribal kingdoms. So the essential continuity of England was assured. Hampshire is older than France. Other shires, like those in the midlands, were constructed later; but they are still very ancient. — Peter Ackroyd

And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it won't be of any help to you. Even my admission can very well be a lie because there is dissimulation only if one tells the truth, only if one tells that one is telling the truth), still the text will remain indefinitely open, cryptic and parodying. — Jacques Derrida

There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today. — Thomas Mann

A lie is still a lie
even if it's disguised
as the truth. — Sherman Kennon

Always the idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave. It is a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafing waves lie quiet forevermore. There the child nestles as peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Despite having been awarded the dubious honor of arthood, all photography is still perceived as having one foot in the real world, a toe in the chilly waters of verisimilitude, no matter how often it is demonstrated that photographs can and do lie. — Lucy R. Lippard

I worry the Christian community has accepted an insidious shift from laboring for others to prioritizing our own rights. We've perpetuated a group identity as misunderstood and persecuted, defending our positions and preferring to be right over being good news. We've bought the lie that connecting with people on their terms is somehow compromising, that our refusal to proclaim our moral ground from word one is a slippery slope. It has become more vital to protect our own station than advocate for a world that needs Jesus, who came to us, wrapped in our skin, speaking our language. If we were not too beneath Christ, who died for us while we were still sinners, then how dare we take a superior position over any other human being? How lovely is a faith community that goes forth as loving sisters and brothers rather than angry defenders and separatists. — Jen Hatmaker

Eric' continues to work willingly with us, but he still balks at even the slightest hint about mater. assistance. We once gave him more than he asked to cover his expenses. He was displeased by this and said that lie suspects we want to give him a certain kind of help. He asked us to give up any such thoughts once and for all. In such circumstances, we fear that any gift from us as a token of appreciation for his work will make a negative impression. 'Eric' is completely selfless in his work with us and extremely scrupulous when it conies to anything that could be seen as 'payment' for his work. — John Earl Haynes

To read a lot of trash mixing the blood of war with business's stench. To root out any happiness. To go out, and down, and on the road. To hesitate; to go on, and ahead, and back, and up the stairs, and in one's room. On the way, to notice that the mountain is still there. To lie and sleep, deeply, heavily. To reproduce night's sleep. To wake up, look through the window at green water, from the Bay to the mountain, and return to one's self. To remember that war is devastating Irak. To feel pain. — Etel Adnan

You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.' I've hidden those words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which? — Jeanette Winterson

From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie. — Hokusai Katsushika

I know what it is: it's a green mamba snake away up in the tree. You don't have to be afraid of them anymore because you are one. They lie so still on the tree branch; they are the same everything as the tree. You could be right next to one and not even know. It's so quiet there. That's just exactly what I want to go and be, when I have to disappear. Your eyes will be little and round but you are so far up there you can look down and see the whole world, Mama and everybody. The tribes of Ham, Shem, and Japheth all together. Finally you are the highest one of all. — Barbara Kingsolver

When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self evident lie" The fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day-for burning fire-crackers!!! — Abraham Lincoln

Midlife dynamically, for both straight and gay males, is often challenging as we face the reality that many of the dreams we had for our lives might not become a reality and unresolved conflicts come to the surface. For us to successfully transition in to the next phase of our lives we must find reconciliation of these issues. And for the gay male there is a sense that the gay self we have tried to keep in the closet or so many years begins to scream out. "Time is running out. When do I get to live?" You can't ignore that voice in the end, you can try and suppress it, and you can try and deny it, you can try and silence it by filling your life with other noises and diverting attention ... but that voice still exists. "Will my entire life be a lie? — Anthony Venn-Brown

I write because I die again and again at the hands of a world that cannot have me or make me fit. I write because each poem is my reincarnation.
I write to remember the self that inherits me every time another self dies. I write because I cannot lie still. — Jennifer Militello

But it seems to me that a man cannot and ought not to say that he loves, he said. Why not? I asked. Because it will always be a lie. As though it were a strange sort of discovery that someone is in love! Just as if, as soon as he said that, something went snap-bang - he loves. Just as if, when he utters that word, something extraordinary is bound to happen, with signs and portents, and all the cannons firing at once. It seems to me, he went on, that people who solemnly utter those words, 'I love you,' either deceive themselves, or what's still worse, deceive others. — Leo Tolstoy

Sometime on a bright blue day
When everything is very clear
And there are no wrinkles in the sky
It's good to go to a quiet place
And lie down on your back and look at the world
Or put your face deep in the grass
And your arms around the ground
And remember how it was when you were little
And remember you're still the same you
Only you got bigger on the outside is all that happened. — Bobby Markels

The Stones This is the city where men are mended. I lie on a great anvil. The flat blue sky-circle Flew off like the hat of a doll When I fell out of the light. I entered The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard. The mother of pestles diminished me. I became a still pebble. The stones of the belly were peaceable, The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing. — Sylvia Plath

PSA23.1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. PSA23.2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. PSA23.3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. PSA23.4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. PSA23.5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. PSA23.6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. — Anonymous

But I have so little of any of these things! You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?"
"No!" cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. "With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly." His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. "Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves. — Chris Bohjalian

At night it is better still. I used to lie on the pallet in the hall waiting until I could hear them all asleep, so I could get up and go back to the bucket. It would be black, the shelf black, the still surface of the water a round orifice in nothingness, where before I stirred it awake with the dipper I could see maybe a star or two in the bucket, and maybe in the dipper a star or two before I drank. After that I was bigger, older. — William Faulkner

The old saw says, 'Let a sleeping dog lie.' Right. Still, when there is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it. — Mark Twain